PaperGames

A collection of 115 classic board, strategy, and puzzle games as a single offline-capable web app, designed to be readable and usable on e-paper / e-ink displays (high contrast, no animation-dependent UI, works without a live network connection once loaded). Play at yourchaoschris.github.io/PaperGames.

Every game is playable against a built-in AI opponent, entirely client-side. Chess additionally supports playing real opponents online via a Lichess account connection (OAuth) — PaperGames is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Lichess in any way.

Free, no ads, no account, no tracking — everything runs and is stored locally in your browser. Once a page has loaded once, it keeps working with no internet connection at all.

Games

• Chess
• Go
• Checkers
• Royal Game of Ur
• Nine Men's Morris
• Backgammon
• Xiangqi (Chinese Chess)
• Mancala
• Reversi
• Four in a Row
• Gomoku
• Senet
• Shogi (Japanese Chess)
• Sudoku
• Peg Solitaire
• Minesweeper
• Nonograms
• 2048
• Yatzy
• Light Switch
• Mahjong Solitaire
• FreeCell
• Card Tactics
• Hnefatafl
• Wall Maze
• Hex
• Halma
• Bulls and Cows
• Dots and Boxes
• Klondike
• Amazons
• Kakuro
• Fanorona
• Chinese Checkers
• Spider Solitaire
• Bagh-Chal
• Tablut
• Marble Brink
• Pyramid Solitaire
• Surakarta
• Hashiwokakero
• Admiral's Grid
• Skyscrapers
• Konane
• Slitherlink
• Ludo
• Categories (Stadt, Land, Fluss) - a game-master helper for the pen-and-paper word game
• Domino
• Mau Mau
• Calcudoku
• No Neighbors
• Killer Sudoku
• Thirty-One (Schwimmen)
• Durak
• Concan
• Doppelkopf
• Trix
• Crate Pusher

Languages

The interface is available in 12 languages:

• English
• German (Deutsch)
• French (Français)
• Spanish (Español)
• Italian (Italiano)
• Dutch (Nederlands)
• Polish (Polski)
• Ukrainian (Українська)
• Russian (Русский)
• Japanese (日本語)
• Chinese (中文)
• Arabic (العربية) - everything except the legal pages, which stay in English (the German/English versions are binding)

Technology

Plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — no build step, no framework, no backend. Game state, settings, and stats are kept in the browser's localStorage / sessionStorage. A service worker (sw.js) precaches the whole app shell on its first install, so every game keeps working offline afterwards, including ones that have never been opened. The home page shows whether that has finished.

Requirements

PaperGames needs a current browser. There is no build step and there are no polyfills, so the browser itself must support:

• JavaScript ES2015 (const, arrow functions, classes, Promises)
• fetch
• CSS Flexbox
• CSS variables (custom properties)
• Service workers, for offline play

On a browser without ES2015, Promises or fetch, every page shows a short note in English and German ("Your browser is too old for PaperGames") instead of the games. The check is the first script of every page (tools/old-browser.js, inserted by tools/seo.js) and is itself plain ES5.

Devices:

• Tested (someone reported back; the list on Tested devices is the reference): PocketBook Era, Tolino Vision Color, Boox Go 7, Tolino Vision 6.
• Not tested: every other device, including the newer Kindle browser (from firmware 5.16.4; its engine is not documented) and older Tolino readers (Android 4.1; browser version not documented).
• Does not run, according to the sources (not tried on a device): the older Kindle browser (WebKit from about 2009, ES5 only, no fetch, no Promises, no Flexbox) and the Kobo browser based on Qt WebKit 538.1.

Sources: documentation for the Kindle browser (older Kindle browser), the-ebook-reader.com (7 Nov 2023, newer Kindle browser from firmware 5.16.4), MobileRead (2019, Kobo Qt WebKit 538.1), goodereader.com (Tolino: older devices Android 4.1, Vision 6 Android 8.1).

License

PaperGames is licensed under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0 (SPDX: PolyForm-Noncommercial-1.0.0). It is source-available, not open source.

• Allowed: private use, hobby, education, research, and use by charities and other non-profit organisations.
• Not allowed: selling it, showing ads with it, or offering paid services based on it.
• For commercial use, please ask first.

Versions published up to and including v253 were released under the MIT License. The text that applied to those versions is kept in LICENSE-MIT-bis-v253.txt. Copies already received under the MIT License stay MIT.

Third-party assets

A few visual assets are third-party work, used here under their own licenses (not the PolyForm Noncommercial grant above, and not restricted to noncommercial use) — see NOTICE:

• Chess piece set ("cburnett") by Colin M.L. Burnett, used under the BSD license, three clauses, full text in NOTICE (pieces.js and the pawn icons in base.css).
• Xiangqi's symbol-style pieces are adapted from piece drawings originally by Inductiveload (Wikimedia Commons), adapted per piece by Kadagaden (github.com/Kadagaden/chess-pieces, "xiangqi_wikipedia_intl_modded"), under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are in their own file, xiangqi-pieces.js, under that license.
• Shogi's piece kanji are adapted from the "kanji_light" piece set by Kadagaden (github.com/Kadagaden/shogi-pieces, CC BY 4.0).
• The Minesweeper and FreeCell home-page icons are made by Skoll and Aussiesim respectively, available on game-icons.net (CC BY 3.0).

The same notice is shown to users on the About page.

Legal

See Impressum (legal notice, German law) and Datenschutzerklärung (privacy policy) for operator details and data-processing information.

GitHub topics

Suggested topics for this repository (set under Settings → General → Topics):

eink ereader board-games pwa offline-first javascript no-dependencies chess tolino kobo kindle